The majority of sub-Saharan households cook using traditional biomass stoves, and 200 million more will do so by 2020. While the rest of the world modernizes its cooking methods and ends use of biomass, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region expected to have more people using these cookstoves due to population growth.
Oct 2015
The majority of sub-Saharan households cook using traditional biomass stoves, and 200 million more will do so by 2020. While the rest of the world modernizes its cooking methods and ends use of biomass, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region expected to have more people using these cookstoves due to population growth.
Traditional stoves come with serious economic and climate costs. The World Bank estimates that African households’ reliance on inefficient energy for cooking costs close to US$60 billion a year, including health, economic and environmental impacts. The health risks associated with traditional biomass cooking –fuelled by firewood, charcoal and dung – are particularly severe.
For maximum health and environmental benefits, policy-makers in sub-Saharan Africa should aim to transform their countries’ cookstove markets to drive a large-scale shift from traditional biomass to stoves using clean fuels or electricity – or advanced biomass stoves.
Working Papers
